America's "First Car-Free Neighborhood" Is Going Pretty Good, Actually?

I thought this cited criticism is interesting:

> Culdesac is a far cry from "the incremental urbanism and thickening our cities need. A dozen or even a thousand Culdesacs can’t solve that problem," because they would lack long-term growth benefits including "the resilience of a system where many hands have built the neighborhood and have a financial stake in it" and would reflect "a zoning and finance stream that favors industrial over incremental production."

It's interesting that one of the most walkable, lively and beautiful urban centers —Paris—was not built this way, but was the result of a big reform by Eugene Haussmann that flattened the "previous Paris" and put his new version on top, which was extremely centrally planned.

The idea of a community incrementally building their infrastructure together based on arising needs and desires is beautiful. But it's not practical in the 2020s where housing is much harder to build due to regulation, zoning etc.

Plus this "incremental" approach can go wrong as well. People forget that for the longest time, cities had higher mortality because they just grew organically and some of that wasn't actually great for humans.

The things we see have survived for a reason. Most cities have gotten rid of A LOT of things that grew "incrementally".

I think this incremental approach is a romantic idea and more is right than wrong about it. But it's also the 2020s where housing is crazy expensive and we have higher expectations of buildings and neighborhoods.

Hardly America's first car-free neighborhood, nor (not by a long shot) its largest.

Along the east coast there are multiple communities on islands accessible only by ferry that are foot traffic only. You can tell they're real places because they have their own U.S. Post Offices (not just mailboxes).

For example: https://villageofoceanbeach.org/about

This seems like a large apartment/condo complex with a variance for number of parking spaces.[0] I think the distinction between this and a conventional neighborhood is that the central organization retains property ownership. Culdesac Tempe has "700+ furnished and unfurnished apartment homes for rent." The proportion of property owned vs rented is significant because of the skin in the game a person with an ownership has and how that drives different tradeoffs. I suppose neighborhoods with super-powerful and intrusive Home-Owners Associations would be similar to Culdesac Tempe.

0. https://maps.app.goo.gl/NhiVJuSChWh2pvUP6

Superblocks are such a great idea, and a way to incrementally make cities more walkable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_block#Superblock

That's not a neighborhood. That's an apartment complex! It covers roughly 200 by 300 meters.

For comparison, the average officially recognized neighborhood in San Francisco is around 3.3 km². That "neighborhood" covers around 0.07 km².

I didn't see it mentioned in the article. But how do people get to groceries, doctors appointments, hospital visits, or school? I assume you need some sort of wagon. When we lived in an apartment, we pulled up as close as possible to our building and took several trips up and downstairs. But there is no car in this scenario. Family of four consumes a lot every week.

Also I imagine that because its apartment based, people are more inclined to spend time outside rather than couped up in their apartment?

After reading peoples comments, people don't realize how bad car brain is. Yes, there have been countless car free cities and many studies show that they're vastly better. However, the auto industry brain washing is so effective that everything an American does starts with a car. They are unable to think without one.

That's basically similar to some historical centres in some cities in italy (eg. Pisa, Firenze). Although in italy, traffic is reduced and not zeroed, mostly limited to only people living there. This way, people can still use a car to move when they need, but it's still walkable for everybody

So, Europe, basically. My metropolitan area can be accesed by bus/train and even boat in some shores. You don't need a car at all. Heck, parking your car in the center of the city is almost wallet-suicidal as you have to actually pay per hour.

Amazing lack of real photos and, seemingly, people.

Every neighborhood is a car-free neighborhood if you’re rich enough, poor enough, or determined enough.

Source: Me, determined enough.

if you are not in a car you should be immediately arrested until proven innocent. the prowlers, spotters, and other professionals casing your car-based neighborhood are usually car-free.